The fall of the Roman Empire
A social and ecological interpretation In this popular essay, Edward Goldsmith finds that internal moral and political decay and unsustainable agriculture underlie the fall of the Roman Empire, while the Barbarian invasions were merely the coup de grâce. The comparisons with our own society and misguided sense of permanence are unsettling. Originally published in The Ecologist, July 1975, then in Le Sauvage (France), April 1976. This revised version appeared as Chapter 1 of … Read More
Aluna (2012) – the Kogis return
In this new film, Alan Ereira returns to the Kogi of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Columbia, 20 years on from his first visit,* which opened the world to this lost pre-Columbian civilisation and its message that we (“the Younger Brothers”) are set on a course of global self-destruction. This time they lead us into the world of Aluna—the mind within nature—in a last attempt to teach us the error of our ways and help avert disaster before it is too late. The film … Read More
Seeds of Freedom (2012)
Seeds of Freedom charts the story of seeds from their root at the heart of traditional, diversity-rich farming systems across the world, to being transformed into a powerful commodity used to monopolise the global food system. The film highlights the extent to which the industrial agricultural system, and genetically modified seeds (GMO) in particular, has impacted on the enormous seed biodiversity evolved by farmers and communities around the world since the beginning of … Read More
Pollution by tourism
Mass tourism is not a benign force of economic development, as popularly supposed. It rather corrodes the health, well-being and environment of the societies it collides with, while the promised benefits fail to materialise for the great majority of people. This article, one of the first ever critiques of mass tourism, was published in The Ecologist Vol. 4 No. 2, February 1974, and republished in The Doomsday Funbook (Jon Carpenter Books, February 2006). See ordering information … Read More
The Post Industrial Age
In the early years of its publication, The Ecologist came with the subtitle "Journal of the Post Industrial Age". Its message—that society needed to begin voluntarily de-industrialising if it was to avoid global catastrophe in the century ahead, a disaster that would mean de-industrialisation by default—with all the suffering that would entail. The seminal Blueprint for Survival published in January 1972 was the manifesto that outlined this vision of a voluntary transition to … Read More
The Promethean Enterprise
RapNews bring us their latest musings on what it's all about (above); in particular: Man's quest for ultimate knowledge. But is this the kind of knowledge that we really need? Edward Goldsmith suggests not, and shows how Science has become a kind of quasi-religious cult, misdirecting our attentions away from the knowledge and wisdom that we really need to solve the critical problems facing us today - Is science a religion? The Cosmic Covenant Towards a Biospheric … Read More
Featured Articles
Community Supported Rewilding
*UPDATE* 18th April 2013. Kiwi release in Northland Last weekend 14 kiwi were released in an attempt to restore the endangered bird to the New Zealand mainland in Marunui. Read more here. The Marunui Conservation project in Auckland, New Zealand, is a successful example of a private initiative … [Read More]
Global warming unabated while Arctic ice recedes
*UPDATE* 22nd August 2012. Arctic sea ice—both by area and volume—is set to reach record lows this year and, if predictions are correct, will be completely absent during the summer from around 2015 onwards. Some climatologists believe that this catastrophic reduction in Arctic ice-cover is directly … [Read More]
Brazil’s large dam projects
*UPDATE* 15th August 2012. Court halts work on Belo Monte dam A high-level court yesterday suspended construction of the controversial Belo Monte dam project on the Amazon’s Xingu River, citing overwhelming evidence that indigenous people had not been properly consulted prior to government approval of the … [Read More]
Transition
The Crisis of Civilization (2012)
Based on the book A Users Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: and how to save it,
Towards the stable society: strategy for change
Section 2: A Blueprint for Survival. The Blueprint occupied the entire issue of
Epistemology
Living things seek to understand their relationship with their environment
Published as Chapter 16 of The Way: An Ecological Worldview, originally published
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